Originally published at: Study shows gender-affirming chest surgery produces "overwhelmingly positive" results | Boing Boing
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The snarky tl;dr is “Yet Another study on gender-affirming care confirms the bloody obvious.”
If anyone working for The Onion is here, please give me a call if you want to use that headline- all I want is a crediting blurb and a copy of the article.
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I watched Stay on Board: the Leo Baker Story on Netflix over the weekend. Baker is a world class skateboarder who is also trans. Near the end of the documentary he gets long-postponed top surgery and is profoundly transformed by it; his relief shines from the screen. It was amazing to see.
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I will forward this along to my friend who has been falling down the rabbit hole of “transition regret” Reddit threads in hopes that it makes a dent. But man, a small handful of unverified anecdotes is really fucking sticky for some folks.
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Anecdata may seem more convincing because it’s personal and immediate. There aren’t groups of people studying results and doing math, it’s people telling their story in their own words. I could present papers showing the harm done by religious organizations and they wouldn’t hold a candle to one story of personal transformation through faith.
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As already mentioned by @BakerB, data doesn’t matter to those people. And the people who do look at data only look at data that affirms them. Furthermore, in knowing one of these people, they now have a study to point to in order to preemptively dismiss data that they don’t like.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325033477_Equalitarianism_A_Source_of_Liberal_Bias
Their suspicions are proven that liberals are biased, and knowing that makes their data suspect. 
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No shit.
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The median Satisfaction With Decision Scale score was 5.0 (IQR, 5.0-5.0) on a 5-point scale, with higher scores noting higher satisfaction. The median Decision Regret Scale score was 0.0 (IQR, 0.0-0.0) on a 100-point scale, with lower scores noting lower levels of regret. A univariable regression analysis could not be performed to identify characteristics associated with low satisfaction with decision or high decisional regret due to the lack of variation in these responses.
clear as day.
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Here in Alabama, gender-affirming chest surgery requires a mental health assessment from a professional. Ms. Pane signs a lot of these. A lot. She’s never had a single person come back with regrets. Sure, anecdata. But a lot of it.
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Thing is, there is data on this showing ridiculously high levels of satisfaction and low levels of regret. More favorable than pretty much any procedure done. This is why the fascists focus on a couple of detransitioner kapos to the total exclusion of any actual data. Of course, they are allergic to actual data on anything, especially if it does not support their small minded positions.
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On ebay, five star sellers get benefits that swamp any other consideration, so a three star rating – not great not terrible-- is perceived as a grievous insult. Similarly, customer service reps get docked in pay if they aren’t as resourceful as M Gustav H
Anything less than 5 star satisfaction and anything more than zero regret will get seized upon.
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Well, it’s how they get vaccine information, too!
We’re quarantining a bunch folks here because their TB titer came back “not immune.” Most of these folks are international students who hadn’t had access to a TB vaccine. But I figure it’s only a matter of time before the influx of international students mixes with the kids of anti-vaxx child abusers and we get a TB outbreak.
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BCG Vaccination - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
BCG vaccination only provides considerable protection for the development of severe clinical forms resulting from hematogeneous spread, such as miliary TB and TB meningitis, among infants and young children for the first 10 years of their life. Consequently, BCG vaccination is recommended as early in life as possible where TB is endemic or among high-risk groups. In view of the unclear protection offered by BCG against adult forms of disease, its role in the prevention of TB is today doubtful. Therefore, due to the insufficient evidence, recommending vaccination beyond infancy, or revaccination in later age is unwarranted (World Health Organization,
BCG is not a terribly good vaccine, but it is currently all we have. Vaccinating adults is not usually recommended.
(Way, way off topic now.)
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which is exactly why the gop is out there banning books, gender studies, and black history. it’s very hard to refute the lived experience of the actual people affected - so burying those stories is their only viable approach
( eta, oh: and flooding the public space with false stories, one off anecdotes, and false or misleading statistics. all of those techniques are useful for them too. )
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This data backs up my personal experience. When I had top surgery, the removing of boobies kind, I was ecstatic. I honestly didn’t care if there were scars. I got nipple grafts, but I know a lot of other trans dudes that don’t. All that matters is that my chest was flat. 110% satisfaction.
My wife, also transgender, got top surgery of the getting boobies kind, and she is also 110% happy. No question. It made a difference for her.
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Study after study shows that gender affirming care, be it medication or surgery is remarkably successful. Yet, there is still this ridiculous double standard where you need letters from mental health professionals in order to get the surgery.
Over the years, I have tried many times to get surgery, but I wasn’t able to get the proper letters. Due to this, I have never been able to get any gender affirming surgery, even though I transitioned in the 90s.
The only thing I, as an adult should need to get surgery is my desire to get it. The system is still rigged against a trans person’s own personal responsibility.
Thankfully, it is slowly starting to change, where I am, you don’t need a letter to start HRT, whereas in the 90s I needed them to start.
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Yes. So it is useful to also have some stories of personal transformation through rejecting faith. If someone adopts a belief because it gives them a pleasant emotional response, it’s hard to change their mind using logic. Rather than providing data quantifying the harm done by a religious organisation, look for something that will produce an emotional response, such as an account written by someone who experienced abuse within that organisation and escaped it by abandoning that organisation.
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Adjacent issue, women who want a breast reduction often need documentation from a physical therapist (that they’ve tried a month or two to relieve upper back pain), but no mental health screening. Also has a very high satisfaction rate.
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Even more closely adjacent issue: an AMAB boy experiencing gynecomastia would almost certainly be given breast reduction surgery without anything more than a physical evaluation, even as a minor. And yet, is that not gender-affirming surgery???
(Disclaimer: IANAD or a health professional of any kind.)
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Given the assertion that gender-affirming surgery is some sort of attention-seeking behavior or the product of social pressure(because, as we all know, there’s basically nothing hipper and more popular than being trans; it’s just jealousy that explains the murder rate); the comparison to the (distinctly middling) satisfaction and (fairly high) regret rates for cosmetic surgery seems particularly dramatic.
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